Introduction

These maps summarize the latest available COVID-19 outbreak data from the New York Time’s COVID-19 project, the State of Missouri, the City of St. Louis, and St. Louis County. The New York Times data are used for state and county-level data, and local data sources are used for zip code and individual level data.

What Makes These Maps Unique?

Unlike other interactive maps being used to track the outbreak, the initial three maps include the counties in Illinois, Kansas, and Oklahoma that are part of Missouri’s metropolitan areas. Kansas City itself is also displayed here as if it were its own county. This is necessary because their public health department is reporting data for the city separate from the four counties that include parts of Kansas City.

The final map is also unique - it includes both the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County on one map and with a shared set of legend values, making direct comparisons possible. It shows Zip Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs), which are generalized areas that are roughly equivalent to USPS zip-codes. They are not 100% the same, however, and some homes with a given zip code may fall outside of ZCTA boundaries.

How to Use These Maps

These maps are fully interactive. Clicking on a county will reveal some details about that place. You can navigate around them just as you would with Google Maps. You can zoom with your mouse or the plus and minus buttons in the upper-left corner of each map. You may also move the maps around by clicking with your mouse and dragging.

Caveats

Due to lags in reporting, both at the public health department level and at the New York Times itself, these numbers may lag behind other figures reported in the media.

On May 6th, the New York Times began including probable cases (those without a confirmatory test result but where symptoms indicate a COVID-19 infection). Not all counties report probable cases, however, and so I include markers on plots to indicate when the reporting change beginning on April 15th may have occurred.

Daily Testing Data

Daily testing data are complied from a number of sources. For Missouri, the data set has been sourced directly from data posted by the Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services. For other states, data is sourced from The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project.

Tracking begins on 2020-05-23 because, prior to that date, Missouri had been mixing serology test results with live virus test results (sometimes called PCR or RNA tests). These tests measure two fundamentally different things - active tests for the live virus test and antibodies for the serology tests. Mixing their results does not follow best practices, and had the effect of diminishing the percent positive test results. I do not consider test data from prior to 2020-05-23 reliable, and thus do not report it here.

New Tests Average

Testing Rate

Percent Positive

Missouri Data

Rates are per 100,000 residents, and averages are 7-day rolling averages.

All Data

Rates are per 100,000 residents, and averages are 7-day rolling averages.

Daily Data

While the City of St. Louis, St. Louis County, and Kansas City provide day-by-day tracking of cumulative cases on their respective dashboards, the State of Missouri does not. The following tabs provide daily breakdowns of COVID data as well as additional statistics not included in the existing dashboards. Data are also provided for the wider St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas. Please note that the two average columns for reported cases and deaths are both seven-day rolling averages.

Missouri

St. Louis Metro

City of St. Louis

St. Louis County

Kansas City Metro

Kansas City

Health Care Infrastructure

This first map uses data from the Kaiser Health Network to identify counties (in gray) without any hospitals as well as the number of ICU beds per 1,000 residents in counties that do have hospitals. Keep in mind that some hospitals may have expanded ICU bed capacity in anticipation of increased need.

For Kansas City, all hospital and ICU bed data have been allocated to Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte Counties. If you have a sense of number of beds in Kansas City, MO itself as opposed to the surrounding counties, please feel free to drop me an email.


Infection Rates by County

This map shows infections as a rate per 1,000 residents. It is important not to map the raw counts themselves, but if you want to see those data, click on a county. You can also view the hospital infrastructure details from the first map for each county by clicking on them or by viewing the data table.

Map

Data Table

Average New Cases by County

This map shows a seven-day rolling average of new cases. For this map, this covers 2020-06-25 back through 2020-06-18. There is not a threshold for what constitutes a high or low average, but the higher the average number of new cases, the more new spread we can infer. For mapping purposes, these are displayed as a rate per 1,000 residents. As with the prior maps, additional details are available by clicking on each county or on the data table.

Map

Data Table

Mortality Rates by County

This map shows mortality as a rate per 1,000 residents. As with the prior maps, raw counts of deaths and hospital infrastructure details are available by clicking on individual counties or on the data table.

Map

Data Table

Infection Rates by St. Louis ZCTA (Zip Code)

This map shows infections as a rate per 1,000 residents for all ZCTAs with five or more patients. It is important not to map the raw counts themselves, but if you want to see those data, click on a ZCTA or the data table. If a ZCTA straddles the city and the county, and only has reported infection numbers in one entity, its estimated partial population will be displayed. Similarly, estimated partial populations for zip codes that straddle outlying counties are used.

Map

Data Table

Health Disparities

One striking facet of the COVID-19 outbreak is the effect it has had on communities that have been historically been marginalized in the United States, including African Americans, indigenous nations (the Navajo Nation has one of the highest infection rates in country), and people incarcerated in jails/prisons. What ties these groups together is not inherent biological risk. Rather, disinvestment at the community level means the agencies and organizations that serve these communities often lack the resources needed to prevent the spread of infectious disease. This is long-standing social and health disparities that potentially leave individuals more susceptible to severe illness.

Missouri

Race, Morbidity

Race, Mortality

St. Louis

Poverty (Zip Code)

Race (Zip Code)

Race, Morbidity

Race, Mortality

Race/Sex, Morbidity

Race/Sex, Mortality

Hospitalizations in St. Louis

St. Louis has had a regional pandemic task force that covers four major health care systems: SSM (SLU), BJC Healthcare, Mercy, and St. Luke’s Hospital. The task force has been providing daily media briefings since April 5th. Their data covers the largest hospital systems in the region, so while it does not include every possible hospital, it does include a large share of COVID-19 patients. All averages presented are 7-day rolling averages.

New Hospitalizations

Total Hospitalizations

ICU Patients

Ventilated Patients

All Data

Other Static Maps and Plots

In addition to the interactive maps above, I regularly update a range of static maps and plots that capture the progression of the COVID-19 outbreak in Missouri, several metro areas, and at the ZCTA (zip code) level in St. Louis City and County. The most recent versions of each plot can be viewed by clicking on the links within the tabs below.

Technical Notes

  • The Fisher breaks algorithm (Fisher 1958, Slocum et al. 2005) is used to identify legend categories
  • Estimated populations for the the four counties around Kansas City as well as Kansas City itself were created using areal weighted interpolation (see Prener and Revord 2019)
  • Estimated populations for partial zip codes are also created using areal weighted interpolation (see Prener and Revord 2019)
  • For county and state-level data, the New York Times data set is used from January 24th through April 14th. Beginning April 15th, the Johns Hopkins data set is used.